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MAINi'HlV* 


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oSMIBKARY/9/ 


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^•LIBRARY/9/: 


OUR  SALVATION 


BY  REV.  MAX  HELLER 


N  B  W     YORK 

PKKbg    OP    PHILIP    COW  KM,     489     FIFTH     AVENUE 
I  902 


Armex 

5 
Utf 

075 
Our  Salvation 


The  so-called  "  Jewish  Problem  "  is  many  problems  in 
one.  From  the  side  of  the  Gentile  it  is  comparatively 
simple,  nothing  more  than  a  question  of  assimilation  and 
of  the  best  methods  that  will  lead  to  it.  To  the  Jew  who 
values  his  identity  as  Jew  the  problem  presents  every  kind 
of  perplexity. 

The  circumstances  and  tendencies  of  the  modern  Jew 
create  a  physical  problem  of  a  comparatively  novel  kind. 
The  growth  of  what  is  called  urbanism  constitutes  a  menace 
among  all  the  most  highly  civilized  nations.  City  popula- 
tion growing  at  the  expense  of  country  population  means 
physical  decadence,  a  lessening  in  the  rate  of  marriages  and 
births,  an  increase  of  disease,  crime,  insanity  and  the  slums. 
Could  we  have  statistics  on  the  subject  it  would  be  found — 
the  fact  is  too  patent  to  escape  any  observation — that  the 
Jew,  wherever  he  has  free  movement,  flocks  to  the  cities 
in  unparalleled  numbers.  The  urban  Gentile  population  is 
being  constantly  reinvigorated  by  the  influx  of  the  farmer, 
the  miner,  sailor,  etc.,  fresh  elements,  which  act  like  an  up- 
turned black  soil  of  humanity.  The  Jew  has  had  similar 
classes  to  draw  upon  from  the  villages,  thanks  to  the  me- 
diaeval legislation  which  banished  him,  for  his  own  good, 
from  most  of  the  larger  cities;  but  what  the  Russian  Gov- 
ernment accomplishes  by  force,  the  Jew  of  occidental  coun- 
tries does  willingly,  concentrating  himself  into  the  centers 
of  civilization.  Whether  such  a  movement  can  continue  in- 
definitely without  rapid  physical  deterioration  of  the  type 
is  one  as  yet  unsolved  problem. 

The  same  causes  render  more  acute  among  us  an  in- 
dustrial problem  which  troubles  civilization;  the  problem 
of  over-education  and  lessening  skill.  The  learned  profes- 
sions are  becoming  rapidly  overcrowded  among  all  civil- 
ized nations,  at  the  expense  of  lower  occupations  requiring 


21 17524 


4  OUR  SALVATION 

skill,  while  the  armies  of  unskilled  labor  working  at  starva- 
tion wage  are  ever  on  the  increase.  The  Jew  crowds  and 
jostles  the  Gentile  at  both  ends,  in  the  highest  walks  of  life 
and  in  the  sweatshop;  meantime,  he  largely  neglects  the 
skilled  trades,  and  will  never  develop  a  farming  class.  Trade 
school  and  farm  school  have  still  to  prove  whether  they  are 
not  unintentional  instruments  of  "  assimilation." 

The  Jew  has  quite  a  number  of  social  problems  of  his 
own,  by  which  he  further  complicates  the  puzzles  which 
have  everywhere  been  creatd  by  new  political,  industrial 
and  educational  factors.  His  social  intercourse  with  the 
Gentile  is  made  difficult,  on  the  one  hand,  by  the  prohi- 
bition of  intermarriage,  on  the  other  hand  by  that  close- 
ness of  family  ties  which  forces  him  to  take  his  relatives 
along  into  better  circles ;  not  to  mention  his  many  peculiar- 
ities, such  as  sensitiveness,  self-consciousness,  restless  am- 
bition, which  place  a  barrier  of  social  estrangement  between 
him  and  the  Gentile.  He  has,  of  course,  social  problems 
confined  to  his  pale,  among  which  may  be  counted  the  inter- 
relationship of  Portuguese,  German  and  Russian,  of  rich 
and  poor,  the  bounds  of  "  society  " ;  his  problems  of  charity, 
too,  have  aspects  entirely  of  their  own. 

No  one  will  question  the  seriousness  of  our  religious 
problem.  We  share  almost  every  disadvantage  of  position 
which  has  come  to  modern  religions  from  the  dominating 
secularism  of  our  age ;  we  only  intensify  the  worldliness  of 
the  modern  life,  the  license  of  modern  thought  as  against 
a  religion  which  has  made  a  bold  and  sudden  turn  of  front 
in  its  reform  movement.  We  thus  partake  of  the  troubles 
both  of  the  ancient  orthodoxies  and  of  the  brand-new  in- 
tellectualisms,  against  all  of  which  we  must  contend  without 
the  aid  of  religion's  greatest  weapon — a  Sabbath.  Weighted 
down  as  we  are,  we  are  handicapped  additionally  by  our 
congenital  inability  to  organize  on  large,  firm-knitted  plans. 

Not  one  of  these  problems  is  as  fundamental  and  as 
puzzling,  as  wide-reaching  and  impalpable  as  this  psycho- 


OUR  SALVATION  5 

logical  problem :  How  shall  the  Jew  preserve  his  identity  as. 
a  type?  The  preservation  of  his  religious  individuality  de- 
pends on  this;  the  practicability  of  his  continuance  as  a 
distinct  force  is  determined  thus  and  not  otherwise.  The 
anti-Semite  has  nightmares  of  an  impending  universal 
Judaization ;  with  far  more  justice  may  the  Jew  stand  ap- 
palled before  the  overwhelming  torrents  of  Christian  edu- 
cation which  storm  in  upon  him  from  all  sides,  from  school 
and  press,  commerce  and  politics,  threatening  utterly  to 
wipe  out  whatever  is  distinctively  Jewish  in  him. 

In  my  humble  opinion  we  stand  here  before  the  most 
perplexing  of  all  the  complications  of  our  position :  the 
inherent  alienism  of  the  Jew,  for  which,  m  these  surround- 
ings, there  is  only  one  end — utter  submersion  in  Chris- 
tianity. I  am  fully  conscious  that  this  means  an  unreserved 
indorsement  of  the  major  premise  of  anti-Semitism ;  I  in- 
dorse it  unequivocally  as  the  only  result  of  honest  reflec- 
tion. Judaism  as  a  mere  system  of  moral  and  religious 
truths  has  no  argument  to  offer  against  coalescence  with 
Unitarianism ;  Judaism  as  the  outgrowth  of  an  age-long 
discipline  of  a  people  has  a  future  of  boundless  promise  in 
the  development  of  that  people,  whether  we  call  them  a 
race,  nation  or  a  "  flock."  In  the  individuality  of  the  Jew 
lies  the  future,  as  out  of  it  grew  the  past  achievements,  of 
Judaism  ;  the  survival  of  Judaism  as  a  vital  religious  force  is 
inconceivable  apart  from  the  preservation  of  the  Jewish- 
type  in  its  marked  characteristics  of  mind  and  heart. 

History,  especially  as  interpreted  by  Jewish  apologists, 
seems  to  contradict  my  assertion  that  the  Jew,  so  long  as 
he  remains  typical,  is  inherently  an  alien.  I  shall  not 
quarrel  over  individual  examples;  but  I  shall  broadly  claim 
that  a  man  may  be  an  ardent  patriot,  capable  of  any  sacri- 
fice for  his  country,  his  soul  steeped  in  the  spirit  of  its 
literature,  his  bosom  swelling  with  its  glories,  and  that  he 
may  yet  have  the  feeling,  all  the  time,  of  being  an  adopted 
stranger,  whose  enthusiasm  is  remarkable,  whose  patriotism 


<5  OUR  SALVATION 

is  not  taken  for  granted.  Possibly  some  historian  of  culture 
may  take  up  the  study  some  time  of  the  self-consciousness  of 
the  Jew  in  modern  civilization;  not  of  Jews  like  Spinoza, 
Lassalle,  Marx,  who  threw  their  Jewish  identity  boldly  off 
before  they  plunged  into  the  broad  stream  of  the  general  life ; 
but  of  such  as  Heine,  Borne  and  Auerbach,  of  Lasker  and 
Bamberger,  Beaconsfield  and  Zangwill— rmen  whose  intense 
nationalism  has  always  a  tinge  of  Jewish  self-consciousness. 
One  is  continually  reminded,  by  these  undertones,  of  the 
author  of  "  Peter  Schlemihl."  who  painted  so  touchingly 
his  own  divided  feelings  as  an  emigre  that  became  a  great 
German  poet. 

These  problems  which  1  have  sketched  very  abruptly, 
each  of  which  admits  of,  almost  commands,  extensive  argu- 
ment, portend  to  me  only  one  solution — the  return  to 
Palestine.  It  is  a  solution  against  which  my  idealism  has 
struggled  long,  but  to  which  my  study  of  history  points  as 
the  only  one  remaining.  Until  some  months  ago  I  still 
believed  that  the  Jew  has  his  chief  mission  in  dispersion  as 
a  disembodied  spiritual  force  which  shall  preach  peace  and 
righteousness,  and  thus  become  the  international  Messiah 
of  mankind.  lint,  with  all  our  great  Jewish  names,  I  see 
no  Jewish  name  in  the  front  rank  of  wide-reaching  moral 
or  religious  influences;  the  cultured  Jew  is  powerfully 
swayed  by  the  Emersons  and  Carlyles,  Ibsens  and  Tolstois; 
he  cannot  escape  the  influence  of  a  Beecher  or  Brooks,  a 
Newman  or,  Robertson ;  what  preachers,  by  tongue  or  pen, 
has  he  given  to  the  modern  world  whose  names  could  be 
ranged  anywhere  alongside  of  these?  Since  Moses  Men- 
delssohn, no  Jew  has  ever  found  the  ear  of  the  people  with 
great  religious  lessons  as  the  modern  Socrates  had  done  on 
such  themes  as  immortality  and  toleration.  The  most  cut- 
ting sarcasm  that  could  ever  be  invented  against  modern 
Judaism  would  be  to  call  it  a  missionary  religion.  The  Jew 
might  dream  of  taking  the  aggressive  as  a  world-improver 
when  prejudice  will  have  utterly  died  down  (little  need 


OUR  SALVATION  7 

then!)  ;  but  at  present,  as  towards  the  prevailing  moral  ini- 
quities and  religious  confusions,  he  is  decidedly  on  the 
defensive — a  defensive,  largely,  of  opportunism. 

But  will  prejudice  die  down?  Are  its  present  symp- 
toms merely  those  of  a  temporary  spasm?  Condemning, 
as  I  most  heartily  do,  those  excrescences  of  nationalism 
which  have  led  to  despotisms  and  greeds  without  number, 
I  cannot  but  regard  the  movement  toward  national  solidar- 
ity as,  on  the  whole,  a  necessary  and  beneficial  stage  in  the 
growth  of  the  human  gender.  Leaving  aside  all  theories  of 
race  as  affecting  nationality,  it  is,  on  large  lines,  necessary 
and  beneficial  that  national  civilizations  should  preserve 
their  individuality  and  develop  it  along  typical  lines.  This 
is  the  higher  political  wisdom  of  the  nineteenth  as  against 
the'  eighteenth  century ;  the  latter  s  ideal  was  that  of  a  vast 
republic  of  cosmopolized  humanity  ;  the  former,  with  broader 
toleration,  favors  the  diversification  of  historic  national- 
ities under  congenial  forms  of  government.  Once  we  have 
grasped  the  underlying  justice  of  nationalism  we  cannot  but 
regard  anti-Semitism  as  a  chronic  disease,  caused  by  fester- 
ing from  foreign  matter.  Tt  requires  considerable  courage 
to  say  this;  it  seems  granting  the  whole  position  of  anti- 
Semitism  ;  but  it  is  simply  "  judging  our  neighbor  by 
imagining  ourselves  in  his  place." 

Let  us  examine  into  a  concrete  case.  No  man  with 
any  sense  of  justice  or  humanity  could  wish  to  palliate, 
much  less  to  justify,  the  hypocrisies  and  cruelties  which 
are  being  daily  committed  by  the  Roumanian  Government ; 
but  as  no  evidence  has  ever  been  adduced  that  these  prac- 
tices are  disapproved  of  by  any  large  portion  of  the  Rou- 
manian people  it  is  safe  to  conclude  that  there  must  be  some 
plausible  argument  in  favor  of  this  terrible  course,  else  the 
next  turn  of  politics  would  bring  a  change.  .  The  only  ex- 
planation that  would  account  satisfactorily  for  this  state  of 
things  is  found  in  the  superior  efficiency  of  the  Jew  which 
would  result,  under  a  just  and  constitutional  policv,  in  con- 


8  OUR  SALVATION 

quering  for  the  Jew  every  leading  place  in  the  commerce, 
industry,  art,  science,  education,  politics  of  Roumania.  Has 
any  people  in  history  ever  submitted  tamely  to  such  a  con- 
quest on  the  part  of  a  small  number  that  differed  from  the 
majority  in  descent  and  faith?  Can  it  be  fairly  expected 
that  the  Roumanian  will  thank  the  Jew  for  bringing  him 
the  blessings  of  civilization  and  rewarding  himself  with  the 
wealth  and  honor  of  leadership  in  return  ? 

In  Roumania,  with  a  semi-barbarous  people,  com- 
mercially unenterprising,  industrially  unskilled  and  indolent, 
the  conflict  reaches  its  acutest  form ;  but  in  countries  like 
Germany,  where  the  superior  efficiency  of  the  Jew  is  not 
nearly  so  glaring,  his  social  and  intellectual  ambition  creates 
similar  embarrassments.  Germans  who  profess  themselves 
fond  of  the  Jews  and  who  condemn  anti-Semitism  in  un- 
measured terms  are  yet  unwilling  to  see  the  Jewrs  occupying 
a  majority  of  the  professional  chairs  or  of  the  public  offices. 
and  consider  it  a  deplorable  necessity,  but  no  less  a  neces- 
sity, that  the  nominal  equality  of  the  Jew  should  be  nullified 
"  auf  Administrationswege  "  whenever  he  threatens  to  over- 
crowd the  avenues  of  preferment.  It  is  granted  by  them 
that  the  economical  virtues  of  the  Jew  benefit  the  country  he 
lives  in;  that  his  enterprise  stimulates  its  commerce;  that 
his  ambition  spurs  his  Christian  competitor;  but  it  is  alto- 
gether beyond  the  altruistic  capacities  of  any  nation  what- 
soever to  yield  its  foremost  places  willingly  into  the  hands 
of  a  strong-typed  class  of  a  few  people  and  thus  to  humiliate 
national  pride,  out  of  a  mere  sense  of  justice  or  in  acknowl- 
edgment of  gratitude. 

Anti-Semitism  seems  to  me,  therefore,  an  absolute  im- 
passe, so  long  as  the  Jew  continues  the  same  strenuous  in- 
dividual ;  it  is  a  case  where  the  oil  feeds  the  flame  and  the 
flame  ever  renews  the  oil ;  anti-Semitism  only  fans  the  Jew's 
intensity,  and  vice  versa.  The  only  alternatives  here  are 
either  submergence  or  emergence;  either  we  must  follow 
Bismarck's  advice  and  mingle  the  precious  Jewish  drop  with 


OUR  SALVATION  9 

the  whole  blood  of  Europe,  so  as  to  dilute  the  former  to 
the  desired  degree  of  thinness,  or  we  must  withdraw  to 
where  our  individuality  may  have  free  play. 

For  my  part  I  cannot  understand  how,  at  this  stage  of 
the  world's  civilization,  thinking  Jews  can  recognize  this 
alternative  between  utter  assimilation  and  national  resur- 
rection without  declaring  themselves  unhesitatingly  for  the 
latter.  If  Judaism  were  a  system  of  religious  truths  and 
nothing  more,  if  all  that  is  needed  were  simply  the  preserva- 
tion of  these  truths,  then  we  could  consistently  and  with 
dignity  march  into  the  Unitarian  camp,  embalm  our  an- 
cestral pride  in  family  trees  and  store  our  traditions  and 
ceremonies  in  some  Semitic  museum  among  the  other  of- 
fensive Orientalisms  with  which  many  of  us  have  become  so 
impatient ;  our  truths  would  be  very  safe  in  the  libraries ;  by 
far  the  largest  and  best  part  of  them  we  would  have  carried 
along  into  our  new  churches. 

But  if  Judaism  is  religion  preached  by  example,  a  law 
made  living  in  a  great  national  heart ;  if  Judaism  is  a  great 
Bible  of  lives  and  loves,  of  historic  yearnings  and  deep- 
seated,  mystical  strivings;  if  Judaism  is  righteousness  burn- 
ing to  nationalize  itself,  the  patriotism  of  justice  dreaming 
•of  its  final  world-conquest — then  how  can  any  Jew  think 
with  complacency  of  wiping  his  people  from  the  slate  of 
world-influences  at  a  time  when  abstract  truth  and  theoret- 
ical justice  appear  so  weak,  as  against  the  reawakened 
greeds  of  commerce  and  diplomacv? 

II 

The  reception  with  which  the  Jew  has  met  on  the  part 
of  the  people  in  whose  midst  he  lived  has  always  exercised 
an  important  influence  on  his  manliness  and  spiritual 
growth.  When  his  faith  and  customs  were  attacked  and 
ridiculed,  a  Philo  and  a  Josephus  defended  them;  when  he 
was  detested  and  persecuted,  expelled  or  burned  as  a  heretic, 


10  OUR  SALV AVION 

his  courage  and  his  self-esteem  rose  against  the  fanatic's 
hatred ;  he  clung  the  more  to  his  faith,  he  grew  in  dignity 
and  firmness.  The  crowded  Ghetto  along  pestilence-breed- 
ing river-banks  could  not  stunt  his  stature ;  he  had  resources 
of  temperance,  self-control,  a  marvellous  home-discipline 
of  authority,  affection  and  religious  poetry  to  oppose  to  the 
mephitic  narrowness  and  dispiriting  ugliness  of  his  sur- 
roundings. He  felt  himself  aman,  exiled  for  his  sins,  se- 
verely tried  by  Providence,  but  infinitely  superior  to  the 
benighted  mobs  that  hounded  him. 

The  true  degradation  of  the  Jew  began  with  the  decline 
of  Christian  fanaticism.  When  the  Jew  was  no  more  hated 
as  an  infidel,  or  detested  as  a  human  fiend,  but  despised  as  a 
Handeljud,  loathed  as  a  cringing,  greedy,  tricky  descendant 
of  Judas;  when  legislation  aimed,  not  at  punishing  him  for 
his  heresy,  forcing  him  into  conversion  or  keeping  him 
apart  like  an  infected  herd,  when  poll-taxes  and  other  an- 
noying regulations,  following  the  policy  of  the  yellow  patch, 
sought  to  mark  him  out  as  an  object  of  contempt  and  ridi- 
cule, then,  with  the  outward  civilization  rising  into  en- 
lightened forms,  he  felt  more  and  more  the  sting  of  preju- 
dice. 

And  now  we  may  observe  a  two-fold  course  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  Jew  by  modern  nations,  speaking,  of  course, 
along  loose  lines  of  distinction:  there  is  the  barbarous, 
brutally  straight  forward  policy  of  the  despotic  East  which 
aims,  with  all  the  shrewdness  of  economical  reasoning,  at 
the  physical  and  intellectual  degradation,  as  well  as  the  com- 
mercial and  industrial  suppression  of  the  Jew;  there  is  the 
racial  antipathy  and  social  prejudice  of  the  West  which 
pursue  the  Jew,  from  the  mock-names  of  his  school-days, 
through  the  barriers  of  society,  the  slanders  of  business  and 
the  partialities  of  public  office,  all  through  life. 

Somewhere  in  one  of  his  dramas,  Schiller  puts  this 
great  truth  into  the  mouth  of  a  heroic  character  that  "  a 
noble  heart  may  school  itself  to  endure  bravely  many  a 


OUR  SALVATION  IT 

terrible  blow,  when  it  would  break  down  under  the  gnat- 
stings  of  continuous  petty  annoyance."  The  Jew  has 
shown  marvellous  endurance  under  suffering;  he  has 
played,  in  Zunz's  words,  "  a  national  tragedy,  lasting  fifteen 
hundred  years,  in  which  the  poets  and  the  actors  were  also 
the  heroes ;  "  he  is  now  called  upon  to  endure  the  vexations 
and  provocations  of  a  jealousy  which  is  void  of  every  great 
motive,  unprompted  by  any  noble  aspiration  or  deep  convic- 
tion, but  cunningly  ingenious  in  searching  out  his  sensitive- 
ness, afflicting  his  self-esteem,  defeating  his  ambitions. 
Formerly  he  had  his  shell  of  isolation  to  retire  into,  the 
Ghetto  where  he  was  among  his  own,  a  Ghetto  which  had 
been  made  for  him,  where  he  could  be  by  himself  without 
incurring  the  odious  charge  of  exclusiveness ;  he  had  great 
convictions  which  upbore  him  in  his  tragic  role,  a  home-life 
which  sparkled  with  religious  poetry  and  nourished  a  proud 
sense  of  superiority ;  now  he  is  asked  to  live  in  and  mingle 
with  this  hostile  world  where  equality  is  held  out  to  him  as 
a  mere  theory,  with  prejudice  and  discrimination  as  the 
realities  at  the  back  of  it.  The  heroism  which  he  is  now 
called  upon  to  display  has  nothing  of  the  footlights  about 
it ;  but  it  would  be  a  far  rarer  and  more  difficult  heroism  to 
exercise  than  was  that  of  his  forefathers,  even  if  he  had,  to 
fortify  him,  the  unwaveringsense  of  the  supremacy  of  his  faith 
and  the  just  scorn  for  Gentile  barbarism  which  upheld  his 
ancestor.  It  is  a  heroism,  not  so  much  of  bravery  as  of 
patience,  not  of  acute  suffering,  but  of  irritating  pin-pricks, 
a  struggle  of  loyalty  against  contempt  in  which  the  lines  are 
so  loosely  drawn  as  to  confuse  and  weaken  the  combatant. 

There  are,  accordingly,  two  systems  of  exclusion,  corres- 
ponding respectively  with  Eastern  and  Western  anti-Semit- 
ism, which  are  progressively  aggravating  the  Jewish  prob- 
lem. On  the  one  hand,  every  new  outburst  of  persecution 
discloses  growing  difficulties  of  finding  an  asylum  for  the 
victims  of  oppression.  One  gate  after  another  is  shut  upon 
the  unfortunate  seekers  of  new  homes,  until  it  is  almost  a 


12  OUR  SALVATION 

certainty  that  another  Russian  outburst  like  those  of  '82 
and  '91  would  force  upon  such  enlightened  governments  as 
England  and  the  United  States  the  same  policy  of  complete 
•exclusion  which  is  now  perfectly  acquiesced  in  on  the  con- 
tinent of  Europe. 

We  need  but  view  this  condition  in  the  light  of  history 
and  of  contemporary  fact  to  realize  its  strangeness  and  its 
horror.  The  Finn,  the  Raskolnik,  the  Armenian,  the  Boer, 
should  they  wish  to  emigrate,  would  be  welcomed  with  open 
arms;  the  Jew  who  found  hardly  a  single  gate  locked  against 
him  in  1492  will  soon  knock  in  vain  at  the  doors  of  all  civ- 
ilized lands.  Some  sixteen  thousand  Roumanians  find  their 
surroundings  unbearable  in  their  native  country;  as  a  con- 
sequence every  lever  has  to  be  set  in  motion  in  London  and 
Washington  to  prevent  the  adoption  of  more  rigid  alien  im- 
migration laws,  even  while  Jewish  organizations  take  charge 
•of  the  movement,  lest  it  overwhelm  their  slender  resources. 
And  what  expedient  is  left  us  with  which  to  meet  the  next 
•outbreak  of  an  Ignatieff  or  Pobiedonostsef f  ? 

Right  alongside  this  system  of  exclusion  has  grown  in 
Wei  tern  countries  the  social  ostracism  of  the  Jew.  This 
phenomenon,  being  of  a  more  subtle  nature,  is  more  difficult 
to  define  or  to  follow  in  its  steady  growth.  A  great  many 
factors  enter  into  the  question  of  social  relationship,  most 
of  them  varying  in  response  to  local  conditions,  almost  afl 
of  them  escaping  the  possibility  of  statistical  calculation  or 
enumeration.  In  a  general  way  it  will  be  admitted  that  the 
spirit  of  prejudice  is  becoming  everywhere  bolder,  more  out- 
spoken, more  consistent  and  systematic.  The  most  alarm- 
ing feature  of  this  progress  is  in  the  invariable  characteristic 
it  has  of  holding  once  conquered  territory  in  undisputed 
possession.  The  hotel  which  excludes  the  Jew  may  reopen 
its  doors  to  him  under  financial  stress;  the  club  or  the  fra- 
ternal society  which  has  once  banished  him,  looks  henceforth 
upon  the  matter  as  settled  forever;  such  an  event  as  the 
breaking  down  of  the  barrier  in  response  to  a  newly  awak- 


OUR  SALVATION  13 

ened  sense  of  justice  is  yet  to  be  recorded  in  a  single 
instance. 

What  is  worst,  the  Jew  himself  accepts  these  fiats  re- 
signedly and  remains  on  friendly  terms  of  business  inter- 
course with  their  instigators;  he  will  see  the  Gentile  who 
owes  his  whole  career  to  Jewish  patronage,  entering  be- 
hind the  doors  closed  to  himself  and  will  not  consider  him- 
self betrayed  or  maltreated ;  in  commercial  exchanges  on  the 
floors  of  which  he  transacts  the  principal  volume  of  busi- 
ness, he  knows  himself  excluded  from  office,  and  yet  con- 
sents to  cast  his  vote  without  protest. 

We  Jews  have  not  yet  realized  the  degrading  influence 
of  living  resignedly  in  an  atmosphere  laden  with  prejudice. 
It  undermines  the  manhood  of  the  schoolboy  who  soon  tires 
of  resenting  insults,  it  poisons  the  friendships  of  the  young 
man,  it  renders  Jewish  sensitiveness  more  and  more  acute 
with  the  disillusions  of  intercourse.  To  a  great  extent  we 
are  constrained,  in  defence  of  our  faith,  to  put  up  such  social 
barriers  as  will  prevent  intermarriage;  an  intercourse  thus 
restricted  will  always  be  deficient  in  spontaneity  and  cor- 
diality ;  and  these  social  Ghetto-walls  of  our  own  rearing 
will  always  maintain  within  them  an  atmosphere  of  petty 
provincialism  which  will  be  intolerable  to  every  larger, 
bolder  spirit. 

This  inevitable  penalty  of  our  social  isolation  furnishes 
the  clew  to  many  strange  phenomena  in  modern  Jewish  cul- 
ture. The  anti-Semites'  claim  as  to  the  parasitic  nature  of 
the  Jewish  intellect  is  certainly  a  distortion  of  the  truth ;  the 
modern  Jew  has  furnished  at  least  two  original  and  pro- 
found thinkers  in  Spinoza  and  Karl  Marx;  if  he  has  been, 
in  other  fields,  an  intermediary  and  interpreter,  versatile 
rather  than  original,  brilliant  rather  than  profound,  that  fact 
does  not  by  any  means  condemn  him  as  a  useless  or  even 
harmful  member  of  the  republic  of  intellect.  Yet  it  is  well 
that  the  Jew  should  not  close  his  eyes  to  the  fact  that  he 
lacks,  in  practical  enterprise  as  well  as  in  scholarship,  the 


14-  OUR  SAL  VA  TION 

broad  comprehensiveness  and  the  bold  initiative  which  are 
required  in  the  pathfinder  and  leader.  Eduard  von  Hart- 
mann's  comparison  of  the  Jew  with  woman  is,  to  an  extent, 
not  altogether  unilluminating;  it  is  not  only  in  science  that 
the  Jews  have  not  one  single  name  of  the  first  rank  to  point 
to ;  not  only  in  the  field  of  invention  that  they  have  not  one 
single  distinct  advance  to  record  to  their  credit;  but  in  the 
realms  of  history,  literature  (with  the  solitary  exception  of 
Heine),  art  and  general  scholarship,  they  must  be  content 
with  second  or  third  rank  for  their  foremost  representatives. 
Their  failure  to  rise  to  the  highest  eminences  is  nowhere 
more  conspicuous  than  in  the  great  moral  and  religious 
movements  of  the  age  to  which  they  have  contributed  next 
to  nothing,  in  their  inability  to  produce  even  a  third-rate 
theologian,  in  the  subsidiary,  micrological  work  they  have 
done  for  their  own  Bible.  Yet  even  in  this  last  species  of 
work  has  one  of  the  smallest  of  nationalities  risen  to  the 
highest  proficiency,  proving  that  originality,  breadth,  dis- 
t4nction  are  not  denied  to  a  national  life  on  a  smaller  scale. 

We  are  often  reminded  how  .greatly  our  wandering  in 
many  lands  has  sharpened  our  wits,  contributed  to  our  adap- 
tiveness  and  versatility,  how  pilpulism  has  kept  the  Jewish 
intellect  vigorous  and  resourceful ;  our  attention  is  rarely  in- 
vited to  the  reverse  of  the  med?.l :  we  are  not  often  warned 
how  greatly  versatility  of  adaptation  and  ingenuity  of  in- 
terpretation are  apt  to  injure  spontaneous,  creative  powers. 

Living  in  the  Christian  world,  and  yet  not  of  it,  the 
Jew  will  always  feel  himself  an  outsider;  something  will 
hold  him  back  from  throwing  himself  freely  into  the  broad 
current  so  long  as  he  has  problems  of  his  own  to  solve  and 
so  long  as  there  are,  with  every  higher  movement,  Chris- 
tian tendencies  to  repel  him.  From  time  to  time  his  ardor 
wiJl  be  suddenly  chilled  by  the  cold  impact  of  prejudice, 
when  he  will  find  the  greatest  and  the  noblest  souls  of  his  na- 
tion, whether  in  past  or  present,  tainted  with  Jew-hatred: 
the  poet  whom  he  loves,  the  philosopher  whose  system  he- 


OUR  SALVATION  15 

may  have  chosen  to  follow,  the  historian  who  has  inspired 
him,  nay,  the  university  professor  who  has  opened  to  him 
new  realms  of  truth ;  it  is  a  disheartening  experience  to  find 
these,  a  Fichte  and  a  Schopenhauer,  a  Treitschke  and  a 
Goldwin  Smith,  on  the  side  of  the  enemy. 

Such  and  similar  causes  foster  in  the  Jewish  character 
.a  certain  timidity  and  diffidence  which  work  great  havoc 
in  our  ranks  and  hold  us  back,  in  great  emergencies,  from 
the  prompt  and  fearless  steps  that  are  needed.  When,  in  a 
great  opportunity  like  that  of  the  Dreyfus  trial,  the  Jew 
leaves  to  men  like  Picquart  and  Zola  the  part  of  aggressive 
heroism,  himself  the  passive  martyr,  the  appealing  wife; 
when,  in  a  movement  for  the  moral  rescue  of  Jewish  slums, 
an  Episcopalian  bishop  is  needed  to  lead  and  to  exhort; 
when,  in  the  face  of  an  active  anti-Semitic  propaganda 
there  is  complete  lack  of  all  organization  or  self-assertion, 
one  can  hardly  escape  the  admission  that  the  boasted  solidar- 
.ity  of  the  Jew  must  be  largely  deficient  in  vigor  and  courage. 

But  there  are  not  wanting  signs  on  every  hand  that  this 
diffidence  rises,  not  infrequently,  to  a  positive  shame  of 
identity.  We  need  hardly  dwell  on  so  notorious  a  fact  as  the 
wide-spread  aversion,  among  modern  Jews,  to  the  distinc- 
tively Jewish  name,  the  foolish  pride  which  many  of  us  will 
show  about  not  being  usually  taken  for  Jews,  the  silly  sub- 
terfuges and  cowardly  concealments  to  which  Jews  will 
sometimes  resort  in  order  to  hide  their  Jewish  identity.  A 
great  deal  of  rabbinical  rage  against  so-called  Oriental  sur- 
vivals is  essentially  nothing  more  than  unconscious  Jewish 
anti-Semitism, a  prejudice  against  Jewish,  things,  simply  be- 
cause they  are  Jewish.  There  are  not  many  who  can  realize 
.the  deep  rottenness  which  is  indicated  by  such  aberrations; 
they  prove  that  the  loyalty  and  manly  pride,  of  other  days 
have  been  largely  replaced  by  the  self -consciousness  and  ir- 
ritation of  shame. 

Among  the  causes  which  contribute  to  the  pallor  and 
feebleness  of  our  religious  life  this  shame  of  identity,  this 
aversion  to  what  is  positively  and  unmistakably  Jewish  in 


16  OUR  SALVATION 

outward  form,  may  not  be  the  least.  Not  that  our  religious 
life  is  wanting-  in  abundance  of  self-assertion  ( in  reiterated 
claims  of  supremacy,  or  in  rhetorical  exuberance;  of  re- 
sounding noise  to  keep  ourselves  in  courage  there  is  no  lack; 
but  of  the  quiet  assurance  which  pursues  a  loved  task  de- 
votedly, of  the  conviction  and  earnestness  which  guard  a 
faith  from  loss  of  adherents,  which  create  an  eagerness  for 
missionary  labor,  of  the  pleasure  in  worship  and  the  attach- 
ment to  religious  associations,  we  have  but  little  beyond 
what  wreckage  we  have  carried  over  from  the  Ghetto.  The 
wealthy  city  community  will  rear  a  magnificent  temple  at 
great  cost;  it  does  not  consider  itself  under  obligation  to 
provide  free  worship  for  poorer  brethren  or  to  assist  in  the 
organization  and  maintenance  of  country  synagogues.  When 
the  temple  has  been  built  it  cannot  count  upon  that  devoted 
attachment  and  fond  pride  which  caused  the  olden  Jew  to 
shower  gifts  upon  the  house  of  worship,  to  endow  free 
synagogues,  to  encourage  Jewish  learning  and  Jewish  piety 
by  bequest  or  endowment.  Of  the  whole  story  of  modern 
Jewish  indifference  to  Judaism,  the  poverty  of  our  semina- 
ries (not  only  in  this  country)  forms  the  saddest  and  the 
strangest  chapter. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  then,  that  the  record  of  the 
modern  synagogue  should  be  one  of  numerous  defections 
and  losses,  which  would  be  bound  to  result  in  final  extinc- 
tion, were  it  not  for  the  stream  of  immigration  from  Jewish 
centers;  where  such  immigration  is  wanting  the  Jewish 
population  stagnates  or  declines.  A  Jewish  community  of 
long  standing  cannot  review  its  old  lists  of  membership 
without  identifying,  on  every  hand,  the  Christian  descen- 
dants of  prominent  Jewish  families  that  had  drifted  from 
the  synagogue. 

From  these  and  many  other  facts  but  one  conclusion  is 
to  be  drawn.  We  have  claimed  it,  time  and  again,  to  be  the 
miracle  of  history,  how  the  spirit  of  Judaism  held  scattered 
Israel  together  without  any  aid  of  outward  bonds,  such  as 


OUR  SALVATION  IT 

local  habitat  t  political  union,  common  garbt  custom,  or  lan- 
guage. The  history  of  Judaism  in  the  Diaspora,  we  claimed 
was  the  marvel  of  spirit  surviving  body,  of  an  idea  consti- 
tuting a  fatherland. 

And  this,  we  concluded,  makes  clear  the  mission  of 
Israel ;  his  dispersion  is  divine  destiny ;  Israel,  distinct  from, 
the  nations  and  yet  one  with  them,  unalloyed  and  yet  fully 
assimilated,  permeated  with  the  modern  spirit  and  yet  em- 
bodying teachings  of  his  own,  is  to  be  everywhere,  whether 
individually  or  collectively,  the  great  teacher  of  freedom, 
humanity  and  peace. 

The  idealistic  conceit  of  this  theory  is  based  upon  mis- 
readings  of  the  past  and  a  misunderstanding  of  human  limi- 
tations. The  spirit  of  Judaism  has  always  dwelled  in  a  na- 
tional body,  while  isolation  was  forced  upon  the  Jew;  the 
scattered  portions  of  Israel  were  held  together  by  abundant 
earmarks  of  nationality;  they  existed  as  sharply  defined 
islands  in  the  seas  of  bigotry;  there  could  be  no  difficulty, 
then,  for  fhe  Jew  in  identifying  at  once  the  brother-Jew  from 
no  matter  where,  and  feeling  bound  to  him  by  the  strongest 
of  national  ties. 

The  miracle  of  preserving  a  lofty  national  genius, 
while  starving  out  the  body  which  sheltered  it,  is  what  we 
have  been  attempting,  in  vain,  to  perform.  It  was  attempt- 
ing the  impossible,  the  superhuman.  We  cannot  preserve 
our  faith  without  drawing  upon  ourselves  the  odium  of  a 
self-chosen  social  isolation;  we  cannot  remain  racially  dis- 
tinct amid  the  jealously  proud  nationalities  of  to-day,  with- 
out either  rising  to  a  superiority  which  will  incense  hatred  or 
falling  to  a  degradation  which  will  embitter  contempt.  In 
the  poisoned  atmosphere  of  modern  materialism  we  may  do 
both:  rise  to  wealth  and  prominence,  while  falling  to  the 
spiritual  nihilism  of  the  sensualist.  If  we  did,  we  should 
melt  away  like  the  snows  before  the  April  sun;  Judaism 
would  die  the  death  of  the  debauched  ascetic. 

But  this  cannot  be.    The  Jew  will  not  barter  away  his 


J8  OUR  SALVATION 

manhood  for  the  tinsel  of  social  position.  The  saving  rem- 
nant that  will  take  up  the  struggle  with  poverty  in  the  olden 
home  may  not  come  from  the  prosperous  classes;  so  much 
fitter  will  it  be  for  starting  a  new  civilization.  The  boldest 
and  the  most  desperate  will  make  the  beginning;  the  first 
show  of  success  will  convert  the  opportunist ;  the  long  years 
of  the  dispersion,  the  painful  training  amid  modern  culture 
will  not  have  been  in  vain ;  there  will  be  a  people  thoroughly 
diversified,  of  experience  most  varied ;  a  self-respecting  peo- 
ple in  its  own  wonderful  country,  no  more  to  dream  of  the 
latter  days,  but  to  enact,  as  a  new  factor  in  civilization,  its 
Messianic  part. 


